It's a pretty straightforward lesson: Spend more money than you've got, and you're headed for trouble. Mr. Micawber, if you haven't read David Copperfield, just couldn't figure out how to live within his budget and kept running afoul of his creditors, landing him in debtor's prison. Oh, jolly days back in Merry Olde England.

Straightfoward, mayhap, but The Micawber Principle is a concept that's proved difficult for the city of Detroit to practice.

Just today, the council voted on whether to authorize an additional $1 million for the city's General Services Department. That's the department responsible for fleet management, including providing gasoline to the Detroit Police Department, the Detroit Fire Department and the city's EMS services.

The council passed the additional appropriation, and is using a larger-than-expected federal Medicare reimbursement to make up the difference. (I'm not sure if, sans federal dollars, the city would have the money to cough up for the gas … and whether the city can use federal reimbursement dollars to pay for gas is a whole 'nother question.)

No pithy Dickens quotes about shell games spring to mind.

However, this is a pretty nice example of how the city of Detroit is keeping the lights on these days.

And it's getting worse. The city is creeping toward cash insolvency. (Municipal finance experts pointed out to me last week that the city is already technically insolvent, since it has suspended payments to all but "critical" vendors – one would have assumed that included gasoline.)

Last week, Gov, Rick Snyder made the first move on resolution of Detroit's approaching financial disaster by delivering a draft of a consent agreement to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit City Council. Bing returned fire with a consent agreement of his own. Reader, you'll be shocked to learn that the governor's proposal gave control of the city to the state, and that Bing's proposal gave control of the city to Bing.

Bing delivered a counterproposal to the Detroit City Council on Sunday night (however, his office told this reporter that the counterproposal was "incomplete," "in progress" and unavailable).

Bing's office says he hopes to reach consensus with the governor. Snyder says the same thing.

However, it's hard to imagine two initial negotiating positions farther apart. Snyder's draft consent agreement reads as a vote of no confidence not just in Bing, but in Bing's management team (the governor's proposal would replace the mayor's executive staff with candidates approved by a financial advisory board controlled by the governor). Bing would get the power of an emergency manager, but under the watchful eye of a state minder. Bing's proposal, essentially, would grant the mayor all the powers of an emergency manager, but with little or no accountability to either the state or the Detroit City Council. Uber Mayor to the rescue.*

Snyder's team won't say what the must-haves in the state consent agreement are. Bing has said that anything that effectively removes local officials from power is a nonstarter.

As one city hall insider said to me, "I think they'd be able to reach an agreement if they could get all the people in the same room … but part of the problem is they can't even agree on which people should be in the room."